Some telecommunications carriers provide priority services to enable the prioritization of voice and data calls to and from devices during emergency situations. Prioritized calls are more likely to be completed successfully than calls for which priority services are not enabled. One implementation of a priority service is to provide a priority service subscriber with a special digit code that is dialed before a destination telephone number to inform the network that the call should be treated with priority. In emergency situations where network resources are crucial to coordinating emergency recovery efforts, the special digit code implementation of a priority service may provide subscribers with more choice than appropriate, thereby possibly allowing their calls to be successfully completed instead of other prioritized calls which may be crucial to the coordination of the emergency recovery efforts.
By way of example, a natural disaster from the perspective of a carrier's network may show a significant increase of voice and data traffic to and from the affected area(s). This is due in part to many individuals attempting to reach friends and family that may have been affected, and those affected attempting to reach friends and family to report on their circumstances. While these attempts to reach friends and family are often profoundly meaningful to the individuals involved, the possibility of network resources being prioritized to coordinate such communications instead of network resources being focused on emergency recovery efforts could affect the ability of first responders and other emergency personnel to communicate effectively, potentially leading to stalled recovery efforts and even the loss of life. The likelihood that prioritized calls will complete when a large number of people have priority for their calls, especially in an emergency situation where network resources are limited, is dramatically decreased, and therefore depreciates the effectiveness of priority services.